Basic
by Audi Canticum
Summary: The more limited you were on options, the more you tended to think about how exactly you could best use them. Ninja magic and explosions galore. [Self-Insert]
1. Tears

When you were limited to exactly three options in terms of ninja magic, you tended to think about what exactly to do with those three options more.

Honestly, you could give enemies hell with just the Basic Three.

You know that cheesy thing in movies when a character has an evil clone and both of them are like, "I'm the real one!" "No me!"

It was like that. Except all the time.

"Hideo, what the _hell!"  
_  
"That ain't me, man!"

"Ah, fuckin' _ninja!"  
_  
If you get hit with something but burst into smoke, turn into a log with a weapon embedded into it, and reappear elsewhere, that's a Kawarimi, right?

Or maybe you had just Henge'd into a log with a kunai and made a Bunshin next to the enemy, and while they fought 'you,' the real you was sneaking up on them, kunai in hand, lunging for their throats, and by the time they turned around, you were already at their throats, their life leaking out of them in carmine splatters.

I tried not to think too much about what I was doing.

I could weep later.

I jumped backwards, avoiding a bandits' blade. My short _blue hair_ ruffled a bit, shaking out tiny crimson droplets. I grimaced, as I saw it, rapidly putting my hands together in a series of hand seals.

 _Bunshin_

Even though the Bunshin weren't solid, as long as the enemy didn't have a magic eyeball, it was difficult to tell if they were an illusion or the real thing. Sure, the clones had no shadows, made no noise, and couldn't interact with their environments, but it was still trippy seeing about a dozen of the same guy rushing at you.

I had seen this before once, a while ago. It had been, god... twelve years? It was in a video. Someone was asked to catch a ball. They could do it the first time. Then they added a bunch of other people, all of them throwing balls around. Even though the extra balls weren't thrown directly to the catcher, they ended up losing their concentration. And when the actual ball that they were told to catch was thrown, they missed the ball.

Hey, catch.

 _Shink!  
_  
I drew two shuriken, one in each hand. Kunai were easier to handle than shuriken. You threw kunai straight, and that was that. Shuriken _could_ be thrown straight, but they could also be thrown in parabolic arcs, which were confusing to someone who, before, hadn't ever even _seen_ a real shuriken. But I had to learn how to handle them quickly.

My life depended on it.

Shuriken were difficult to handle, and especially so when handling two at the same time. But frantic training for fear of death had been rather handy in becoming proficient with the weapons.

The shuriken travelled in their arcs, and I saw the bandits' eyes follow the shards of metal, jumping back to dodge the shuriken. In that time, I drew a short, straight, single-edged sword. I had been learning how to use it in the past few months. Mimura-sensei would've been rather disappointed if he didn't get to pass on his kenjutsu skills to at least _one_ of his genin.

And that sword found its way into a bandit's neck.

"Alright! That looks like all of them. Good work, team."

Covered in blood and exhausted, I looked at the other two genin on my team, who both looked to be in similar states.

I threw up.

. . .

We had a team dinner that night if you could call it that.

It mostly consisted of the three of us genin sobbing while trying to choke down these cardboard-tasting ration bars.

I was a grown-ass man in a child's body. It felt weird to be crying alongside these children.

But I had just _killed.  
_  
Mimura-sensei spoke up, "Alright, that's _enough_ of that."

Aiko, one of my teammates, looked up. Her shoulder-length brown hair was matted and still had dried blood tangled in it, "But sensei, we just-"

Mimura-sensei gave her a harsh look, "Aiko, I fought in the Third Shinobi War. My entire _battalion_ was reduced to just _four ninja._ Do you _know_ what that difference is? The difference between killing, and watching your allies, your _friends_ get slaughtered, right in front of you? It's kill or be killed out here. And _you_ signed up for this. Pull yourselves together. All of you."

I gave Aiko a gentle pat on the back. I met the eye of my other teammate, Eisuke. Even after a month of knowing the guy, I still found his bright orange hair a bit strange. Not that you could really tell that it was orange, what with all the grime in it.

Mimura-sensei was right. We _had_ chosen this, and we had to pull ourselves together.

I got up, falling into the makeshift sleeping arrangements we had prepared, settling into a tumultuous slumber.

 _A/N: So, this story's actually on Spacebattles, I'll be putting the rest of it up as I get it done there. Probably a day or two after I upload them on Spacebattles so that I can get feedback and make adjustments or whatever._


	2. Tears 2

I brushed my blue hair aside, my grey eyes studying book that I had checked out from the library by the dim light of the crackling campfire. It was a basic primer on seals, a worn book, having been checked out many times by others. The Uzumaki clan had cemented the image of seals being some esoteric and extraordinarily powerful art, leading many to want to try to learn them for themselves.

But the students that had checked the book out had clearly not been kind to it, resulting in many pages having illegible content, and a few pages missing entirely. From what I _had_ been able to see, the contents were incredibly dry. Seals were incredibly complex, and very few actually had the patience to work through with them. High tier seals like the Hiraishin and the stuff they used to seal away the bijuu had legendary status. But honestly, just going out to a store and buying some explosive tags was far more efficient unless you had some specific thing in mind.

Like I did.

I sighed and closed the book. I would probably have to go to a bookstore and spend part of this C-Rank's pay on a copy of the book that was actually in acceptable condition. Maybe file a report to the library too, that the book was too damaged and a new one would have to be bough to replace it. I pushed the book to the side, making plans to return it when I got back to Konoha.

I went over the notes that I had taken from the legible parts of the book. A basic introduction to Uzumaki Standard Script, basically various strokes and what they meant. There were millions of different ways to throw together the strokes. And I would guess that it took years to learn how to make sense of everything.

I sighed again. My chakra capacity was... smaller than average. I had tried to mitigate the issue as much as I could by training in chakra control all through the Academy. The leaf sticking exercise was repeated again and again until I could stick a dozen leaves on various parts of my body. I had even gone and done the tree walking technique. Water walking was still beyond me though.

But that didn't change the fact that my chakra capacity was suboptimal. I could train for control all I wanted, but my there was an upper limit on how much chakra you could have, limited by genetics.

Let's face it: no matter how dedicated I was in training for capacity, I was the son of frickin' bakers. And while cakes and bread were good and all, civilian parents didn't make for the greatest genetics when it came to chakra capacity.

So I turned to seals. I figured that there _must_ be a way, with some fuinjutsu tattoos or something, to artificially increase my chakra capacity. And there probably was. Just nothing that was practical to me. Yet. So my chakra capacity remained small.

That being said, I most certainly hadn't hit the upper limit of capacity that I could have, but I would probably never be able to perform the high-tier flashy elemental jutsu. My lack of chakra would probably also make it impractical to use ninjutsu in combat most of the time.

Well, other than the Basic Three. Those things took very little chakra to perform. I could spam them for hours. Also, some genjutsu, if I ever got around to learning them. Which I would. There was a depressingly small list of jutsu that I could pull in battle with my limited pool, and genjutsu happened to be one of them.

My small pool was why I focused most of my training on non-chakra aspects of the shinobi arts and the Basic Three.

Henge and Kawarimi were, in my mind, the most important of the three to learn. Henge was an invaluable infiltration jutsu and Kawarimi was the go-to 'oh shit' jutsu. I had gotten both of them down to a single seal. The Bunshin was at three seals, as I had focused less on it. The Bunshin, however, was ultimately replaceable with other solid clones types. That being said, it was a valuable tool for now, when I didn't have any of the other ones. I would probably continue to use it even if I _did_ get the other ones because the jutsu was dirt cheap on chakra.

I had done some experimentation with the three and doing strange things with them.

Like, how quickly could you move your Bunshin?

Eh, kind of quickly. It depended on your chakra control. When I tried moving my Bunshin as fast as I could, I got them to might a bit faster than I could move. Which was disappointing really. Although, in theory, you could get your Bunshin to be whizzing masses of jumpscares, which could be handy later on.

Could you Kawarimi two other objects together?

I had tried and failed to do this. Trying to switch two different logs. I just kept on switching with the logs rather than them switching with each other. I had no idea how to do it. I'd have to go to the Konoha library to read up on the Kawarimi to try to puzzle out a way to do it. Or ask Mimura-sensei.

Something that I wanted to try but didn't have to time to before I left was mess around with the smoke produced when performing jutsu. Could the smoke be isolated? In that case, it would work really well in combat.

I looked up at the sky, peering at the moon. We had all learned in the Academy to tell the time using the cycles of the sun and the moon. My watch was about over.

I'd have to experiment with the smoke another time.

. . .

None of us spoke as we walked along the dirt path. My eyes darted back and forth along the forest on either side of us, watchful for hostiles. Eisuke's grip periodically tightened and loosened on the straps of his pack, which held the item we were delivering. A particularly valuable, aged brick of tea.

It almost made me laugh.

I had _murdered_ protecting _fucking tea.  
_  
Those guys had _died_ trying to steal _fucking tea_.

That being said, it was _expensive_ tea that would doubt sell very well, but they had _died_ over it.

I was a child soldier now. One that actively experimented with his ninja magic to try to find the best way to murder things. More bodies for less effort. It should have bothered me more than it did. In my old life, I would have been appalled.

Here?

Now?

It was fine. I was fine. It was all fine.

The sooner I adjusted to my new life, the better it would be for me and everyone.

Adjust. Fit in. Conform.

That's all I wanted, really.

Call it cowardly, but I'd call it human nature.

 _Don'tcrycon'tcrydon'tcrydon'tcrydon'tcrydon'tcrydon'tcry  
_  
"You good there, Katai-kun?"

"About as good as you are, Eisuke-kun."

He paused.

"I suppose that's true."

We didn't cry.


End file.
